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Microcirculation response to local cooling in patients with Huntington’s disease

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Abstract

Altered autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning in early stages of Huntington’s disease (HD) has been suggested, presumably due to distorted high-order autonomic control. ANS functioning in the early stages of HD was further investigated. Laser-Doppler (LD) flux in the skin of the fingertips, heart rate (HR), HR variability, systolic and diastolic blood pressure were measured during rest and during a 6 min cooling of one hand at 15°C. Data of 15 presymptomatic gene mutation carriers (PHD), 15 early symptomatic HD patients (EHD), and two groups of 15 age- and sex-matched controls were compared. The area under the low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) bands of the HR variability spectrum were calculated. An augmented reduction of cutaneous LD flux was found in response to the direct cooling in the PHD group (37.5 ± 8.5% of resting value) compared to the PHD controls (67.27 ± 8.4%) (p < 0.05). In addition, the PHD group had higher (LF/(LF + HF) index of primary sympathetic modulation of the HR at rest (53.6 ± 3.3) compared to the EHD patients (39.7 ± 4.2) (p < 0.05). In the EHD group, a significantly smaller change of HR during cooling (100.26 ± 1.2%) was found compared to the EHD controls (95.9 ± 1.0%) (p < 0.05). The results are in line with the hypothesis that ANS dysfunction occurs even in PHD subjects. Further, they support the hypothesis that dysfunction of the high-order autonomic centres are involved in HD.

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Acknowledgments

The study was supported by Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology (Grant No.: PO-510-381), Slovenia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical Faculty, Institute of Physiology, University of Ljubljana, Zaloska 4, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Ziva Melik, Ksenija Cankar & Martin Strucl

  2. Department of Neurology, University Medical Centre Ljubljana, Zaloska 2, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Jan Kobal

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  1. Ziva Melik
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  2. Jan Kobal
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  3. Ksenija Cankar
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  4. Martin Strucl
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Correspondence to Ziva Melik.

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Melik, Z., Kobal, J., Cankar, K. et al. Microcirculation response to local cooling in patients with Huntington’s disease. J Neurol 259, 921–928 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-011-6279-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-011-6279-3

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